PDF Ling 51/Psych 56L: Acquisition of Language

[Pages:69]Ling 51/Psych 56L: Acquisition of Language

Lecture 12 Lexical development I

Announcements

Review questions for lexical development available HW4 due 11/13/17

Lexical knowledge in adults

We know a lot of words

"...the average twenty-year-old native English speaking American knows 42 thousand dictionary words. As we get older, we learn one new word every two days, which means that by the age of 60, we know an additional 6000 words."

-Professor Marc Brysbaert of Ghent University in Belgium

Brysbaert, Stevens, Mandera, & Keuleers 2016.



We know a lot of words

Average first grader knows ~13,000 [Ames 1964] (and has only been alive ~2000 days) - that's 6 to 7 new words a day, assuming that the child learns right from the first day s/he is born!

What we know

Mental dictionary of words = lexicon

Each entry for a word contains a lot of information, including what the word sounds like, how to use the word in combination with other words, what the word means, what other words that word is related to...

/ki/

kitty

puppy animal

cat

the kitty is..., some kitties are...

A note about the complexity of lexicon items

Sometimes, a "word" can have multiple meanings. What's likely going on is that there are multiple lexical items that both have the same word form.



fan1 = a device with rotating blades that creates a current of air for cooling

fan2 = a person who has a strong interest in or admiration for something

So what exactly is a word, anyway?

A word (or morpheme) is an arbitrary symbol that stands for something in the real world (even if it's only a concept in someone else's mind): kitty, goblin, silliness, labyrinth

Some concepts/meanings are more abstract: "doing something in the past", "continuing to do something" (ex: -ed in English, kissed) (ex: -ing in English, was kissing)

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